This seems directly contradicted by the cites I have seen. Do you have any evidence of it?
To be fair, most “modern” hunters and gatherers live in marginal areas, and maybe in ancient days gathering used to be significantly more important (though one wonders how anyone nowadays can determine the relative importance).
But certainly most modern-day hunters and gatherers earn most of their caloric intake via hunting, not gathering. In the case of the Innuit, there isn’t really much to gather much of the year …
[According to the paper cited upthread, 73% of hunter-gatherer societies surveyed got greater than 50% of their calories from meat; only 14% got greater than 50% of calories from plants; presumably the remainder split equally]
That “hunters and gatherers earn most of their calories through gathering” seems like the sort of counter-intuitive meme that gets spread because it sounds interesting, not necessarily because it is factually true. Though again, I’d welcome actual evidence on the point.
Since this thread is in the Pit, and is primarily about hunting, I wonder whether it might be worthwhile to open a GD or GQ thread about the hunter gatherer issue, just since we might be missing the input of interested and knowledgeable people who prefer not to sully themselves in the Pit.
I am not a moderator, nor do I aspire to be one. This is merely a suggestion.
Part but not the whole package the way some non-hunters think. I’ve had fantastic days where I never shot a thing. I was on one hunt I could describe second by second back to a police artist and not only did we not kill anything, we never fired a shot. It was the only time my Dad and I hunted together. We did a lot of different things together but that was our only hunt and its burned in my brain.
“Hunting” to me was a family thing whereby I would get to spend quality time with my Dad, uncles, cousins, and various family members. Much like camping except you got to sit in a blind (with a gun).
I mean that is fun in and of itself. If you don’t like guns or shooting then there isn’t much to be said about the ‘sport’ of it.
Sitting around a campfire, drinking beer, cooking outdoors. All fun stuff. TO ME.
Yeah, I get that, but slaughterhouses are actually weirder & creepier to me. So I don’t really begrudge hunters.
Not that I enjoy sitting out in the woods smelling of woodsmoke & mold, myself. (As a child of the Ozarks, I am a total misfit given my general loathing of smoke.)
This morning’s hunting report, in case anyone is interested.
The stars were out when I left the house and Venus was rising in the east. I went up into the woods and found my spot. On the drive up I saw what was probably a Great Horned Owl, but it was too dark to tell exactly, but it was big. As the sun rose I could see the valley of the Columbia rolling with fog. Like what you see when in an airplane flying above the clouds. A logging operation was starting up a couple of ridges over from mine and I could hear the men going to work and a high-lead tower starting to pull logs to a landing.
I did not shoot a deer. But I enjoyed the morning. I saw a young doe, 2 Ruffed Grouse, and a coyote. Only 2 other hunters on the road.
That’s it. Please carry on with your hunter-gatherer debate. We seem to have gotten away from the reasons for liking to hunt and are now in a more historical and socialogical area about the origins. Got things to do.
Well, first off, was it truly necessary to quote that whole entire post just to say that?
Secondly, it’s not horseshit, because I didn’t say the universe “cared,” nor do I think it does. You’ve entirely missed the point which is simply that a hammer hammers or it’s a waste. The universe doesn’t say it’s a waste. I do.
your cite contradicts nothing. As I stated, the fossil record shows that our ancestors went from almost a pure vegetable diet to an omnivorous diet. That modern humans have continued to evolve, even to the point where eskimos may eat little plant matter hardly does anything to dispute this fact.
I’m not sure why you would find the notion “evolved to eat” ridiculous. It’s pretty basic and there’s countless examples. Bees evolved to eat pollen, ruminants evolved to eat cellulostic plant matter, Pandas evolved to eat bamboo.
You put a panda on the diet a horse evolved to eat and you get a dead panda.
Vultures evolved to eat carrion, and developed a much higher concentration of stomach acid to do so. You would not do well on a vulture’s diet because you have not evolved to eat it.
Finding something ridiculous is not a counterargument. It’s a statement of opinion. And, your opinion is demonstrably wrong.
If your point is that nowadays indigenous humans have a wide variety of diets ranging from almost exclusively meat to almost exclusively plant matter, and that not in all those tribes are woman the gatherers, than yes, I would agree.
An interesting footnote is that our evolution into persistence hunters has left us very specialized. In most sports a person becomes competitive somewhere around age 19. They may continue to improve for a years but eventually they peak and begin to regress. Somewhere around age 27 they recross the competitive line to the downside.
In ultrarunning only, among all physical sports this is wildly different. Again, you become competitive somewhere around age 19, but guess how old you are when you recross that threshold to the downside…
Born to Run is my cite. The author also cites this in the video for the book on Amazon.
Now, I don’t have these figures exact, but at one of the toughest ultramarathons, the Leadville 100 only about 1 out of three people who start the race actually finish it. But, and this is the interesting part 90% of women who start, finish.
Unique among sports in another way, there isn’t really much a battle of the sexes. Women win these things outright. Women are equally competitive with men in ultramarathons (the longer the race the more equal it is.)
The implications are pretty clear. When our homo erectus ancestors were out persistence hunting, the women didn’t stay home and gather nuts.
Scylla, I realize that you are incapable of critical thinking. I will direct you to the GQ thread on this very issue. But hey, we can take Born to Run’s secondhand evidence that actually doesn’t support your point over a real cite.
The rest of your shitty post is incomprehensible gibberish that hangs together about as well as a suit that a blind man got at a going-out-of-business sale.
You claimed “More calories came from gathering in pre-ag societies than came from hunting”. You are wrong, even though that apparently offends your views on… whatever the fuck it is you’re talking about.
Incidentally, Stoid had a GD thread on this topic some years ago.
Not necessarily. I find hunting odd as well. I also think hunting is more moral than eating meat from industrial agriculture. I opine that wild deer and boar are living in more appropriate circumstances than tail-docked piggies, for example. I am not a vegetarian. But plugging Bambi or even vermin holds no interest for me.
Nah, I think Ex-Tank won the thread on post #74, page 2.
Ok, but do you like green eggs and ham?
Seriously, the fact is most of us have little or no inclination to shoot guns at critters. Like me, for example. Given our ancestral environment, I find this puzzling: love of the hunt should be ubiquitous, but it isn’t.
In most of the world, you have to pay big bucks to buy a homestead overlooking a body of water. Wilson traces this attraction to what used to be the best living locations in the Serengeti. In contrast, hunting is priced economically: if it reflected some deep-seated human need, the rights to bag a deer would cost thousands and would be won in contests or lotteries. As it is, hunting is cheaper than photography, never mind golf or skiing.
(bolding mine)
Damn, you need a license for that now?
As for the OP, I don’t hunt, but I wish more people around here would. There are too many damn deer. Hell, I would fine with letting people shoot extra deer and, after making sure they were truly dead, leaving them for the vultures and the insects. We have become the apex predators, time to do our jobs.
Shamefully, no. I did try to edit it to correct for that but missed the window. :smack:
I was specifcally responding to this
To me, unless explicitly modifying indifference or a synonym, cruel and unfriendly connote a deliberate, sought out position. I intepret this to mean, The universe doesn’t like you and will harm you as a result.
My point is you’re not really a hammer. You’re more of a stapler that can be used to push the occasional nail into drywall for the purposes of hanging a picture, but you’re really not fit for use in framing a house. Which is fine, because you’ll never be called on to do so. (i.e. think what you will, but with a $3,000 30-30 and $400 in clothes from Cabellas, you’re no caveman. That’s okay, becasue you don’t live in a cave and probably never will; you live in a house).
